The present invention relates to a honeycomb segment with spacer and a honeycomb structure.
A honeycomb structure is in heavy usage as a trapping filter for exhaust gas for environmental improvement, pollution protection, and the like. For example, a SiC DPF (diesel particulate filter) is currently manufactured by unitarily joining defined 16 substrates (honeycomb segments) with a bonding material (ceramic cement) (see, e.g., Patent Document 1). However, there arises a problem of having cracks in a portion having low characteristics upon a thermal resistant test because of variance in characteristics due to variance in thickness (bonding width) of a bonding layer.
Therefore, there has been disclosed a technique of bonding honeycomb segments using “spacers” in order to stabilize thickness of the bonding layer (see, e.g., Patent Document 2).
[Patent Document 1] JP-A-2000-7455
[Patent Document 2] JP-A-2002-102627
However, when a segment has a bent shape in this method, there remains variance in bonding width in the end face, and thereby an opening ratio of the honeycomb structure also has variance. In addition, there arise problems of easy crashing of spacer and easy causing of misalignment between honeycomb segments when honeycomb segments are bonded.
The present invention aims to provide a honeycomb segment with spacer capable of allowing the bonding layer between honeycomb segments to have desired thickness, inhibiting misalignment upon bonding honeycomb segments, and forming a honeycomb structure having little dimensional error and a honeycomb structure constituted of the honeycomb segment with spacers.